2:00PM Water Cooler 8/9/2024

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Readers have been so happy with the mockingbirds I’m going to keep doing them. Now entering Day Five of Week Three! Do readers have another favorite bird? Or shall I continue with mockingbirds? The Macaulay Library does have rather a lot!

Long-tailed Mockingbird, Left bank Rio Bocapan (-3.7859,-80.7092), Tumbes, Peru. “Individual singing naturally on top of a tree 7 m from ground.”

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Friday’s Covid wastewater (still bad) and polling charts (bad for Trump).
2. Lambert lashes himself to the mast.
3. Walz swiftboating: Nice try, no cigar.
4. Boeing’s Starliner debacle. Again.

* * *

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

* * *

2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

More Blue on the map. Trump still leads nationally, but some swing states moving toward Kamala. In particular, I’m no insider, but if I were on Team Trump, Georgia’s drop from +3.6 to this week’s +0.6 might cause me to chew my hands. Georgia? Really? Atlanta burbs no longer sitting it out? Can any readers from Georgia clarify?

The Weeks That There

We might characterize the story arc of the last two weeks as “Battle of Vice Presidential Oppo” (oppo propagated by two teams of highly skilled professionals, I might add). First, Democrats smeared J.D. Vance for having documented carnal relations with a sofa in Hillbilly Elegy. This was entirely false, and yet — and therefore? — led to an enormous liberalgasm of snark and memage (which some bottom feeders are still stoking). Then, Republicans Swiftboated Tim Walz over his service record, which led to an enormous war dance of conservative frothing and stamping. This sorry episode is not perhaps quite over, but when the Wall Street Journal and Ed Kilgore both agree it’s a damp squib, though not grounded in completely fabricated, things aren’t looking good for Swift Boat Original Guy (2004) and Trump campaign co-manager (2024) Chris LaCivita. In neither case did Lambert the Cautious heed the Siren call of oppo, buy in, or join the dogpile. Like Richard Nixon, who also third-personed himself Ulysses, he lashed himself to his ship’s mast so he could hear the Sirens, but not go overboard and join them:

And back in the day, believe me, I would gladly have joined the baying pack. Today, surtout, pas trop de zele. Even leaving aside the lies, the bullshit, and the manipulation [lambert preens].

* * *

The Campaign Trail:

Kamala:

Kamala (D): “Why Harris isn’t taking questions” [Politico]. “The Harris camp is hoping to ride the wave as long as it can. So there is little worry about the candidate avoiding something else that has long been required of presidential nominees: taking questions from the press…. Harris’ last formal television sit-down interview was on June 24… One longtime Harris ally suggested to West Wing Playbook that Harris could hold off on big interviews until after Labor Day. ‘There’s really no need,’ the person said. ‘The voters that she needs are at the local level. They’re not reading the national press.'” • Biden quit on July 21, and Harris, via apostolic succession, was annointed on the same day. Election Day is November 5. That’s 107 days. Labor Day is September 2. July 21 to September 2 is 41 days. 41/107 = 38%. So Harris will have gotten away with not speaking to the press for 38% of her entire campaign. That’s a big win! Of course, the press gets to talk to her in private:

Playbook detail I hadn't seen before: Harris has been talking with her traveling press off the record (which Biden rarely did). One reason that you haven't seen as much media grumbling about access – the outlets paying for the plane are getting facetime https://t.co/NPvxGNpolH

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) August 8, 2024

Kamala (D): “New Harris ad highlights ‘middle-class’ upbringing” [The Hill]. • The URL: 4819884-new-harris-ad-highlights-working-class-upbringing. BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!! But they couldn’t kill off “working class” everywhere:

The ad:

(The announcer: That kind of husky voice gives me the creeps because it’s a real attention grabber. Is there a name for it?)

Kamala (D): I guess Kamala isn’t hugging Lina Khan any time soon:

Maryland Governor Wes Moore – who is a close ally of Harris – was asked on CNBC about what Kamala Harris will do about antitrust/regulation. And his answer is that she is going to change it from the Biden framework towards a more friendly partnership between government and big… pic.twitter.com/lue4iXz26I

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) August 7, 2024

No platform on her site, no pressers for 38% of the campaign timeline… It’s almost like Kamala isn’t telling us what she’s going to do, isn’t it?

Walz:

Kamala (D): “Kamala Picks a Midwestern Smoothie” [Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal]. Worth reading in full, especially the first part about Trump. On Walz the candidate, Nooners seems to think (like so many) that liberals and the left are the same, a déformation professionnelle of the Beltway pundit of either party. But on Walz the person, I think she is spot on: “We are being instructed that he is ‘Minnesota nice.’ What I think I am seeing is Midwestern smoothie. This is a gifted actor, a natural who plays the part of the affable Midwesterner really well. But he gets pretty lippy pretty fast; he’s a hot figure, not a warm one. On MSNBC in December: ‘I think any time you can highlight how strange these people are, it’s a good thing.’ ‘I don’t need (Mike Johnson) giving me a sermon, I need him to live one.’ On CBS in 2023: Republicans are ‘down there debating whether slavery had a value to it.’ At a rally this week: ‘These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.’ In the ‘White Dudes for Harris’ Zoom call, referring to Mr. Trump: ‘Make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road.’ Excuse me, that is many things, but it isn’t Midwestern nice. He always gets personal. He looks as if he likes Trump voters. But listening to him this week I thought: He doesn’t, not at all.” • Politics ain’t beanbag. However, it seems to me that Walz isn’t just the second guy in Carhartts. He went from being a soldier (a good one), a teacher (a good one), through the House, to Governor, to Vice Presidential candidate (all with zero stocks and no ice cream refrigerators). That’s quite a rise. The word “inexorable” comes to mind. An alert reader — please raise your hand in comments! — wrote that Walz is the kind of guy who always knows where all the exits in a room are. That’s not a bad thing! But Walz isn’t a zelig, or somebody who floats with the current. Prepare to be interested.

Kamala (D): “Is Tim Walz Guilty of ‘Stolen Valor’?” [Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal]. The deck: “His military record isn’t a good reason to oppose his candidacy.” And: “There are plenty of reasons to criticize Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, and we’ve told you about several. But the charges leveled so far about his military service look like ‘thin gruel,’ as our friends at the New York Sun put it.” • And from the other side of the aisle–

Kamala (D): “Why the Swiftboating of Tim Walz Won’t Work” [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. Results of looking at the timeline: “Will this effort work as it did (to some extent) against John Kerry? Probably not. First of all, the facts underlying the LaCivita-Vance line of attack don’t appear to justify all the angry passion. No one is disputing that Walz served honorably in the Guard for 24 years. The first charge, and perhaps the most serious, is that Walz retired at the end of those 24 years (as he was fully eligible to do) in order to avoid deployment to Iraq. Two former Guard colleagues, apparently infuriated by Walz’s opposition to the Iraq War, first raised this charge as part of an earlier political attack on Walz when he ran for governor in 2018. But other colleagues documented that Walz had been talking for quite some time about retiring in order to run for Congress (which is precisely what he did) and that he had no way of knowing about the subsequent deployment when he retired. There’s really no more evidence of Walz’s alleged cowardice than an assertion by two dudes who clearly didn’t like his politics…. The second charge, which Vance dressed up with the lurid term of “stolen valor,” really just refers to a single ambiguous reference Walz made to carrying a gun “in war,” though others have pointed to a claim in a 2006 Walz press release that he served in “Operation Enduring Freedom” (the official name of the Afghanistan deployment). Whatever viewers of that press release thought, the claim is actually true since Walz and his unit were deployed to Europe in a support capacity for that war. Though Vance didn’t mention it, his conservative allies have also charged that Walz inflated his rank in descriptions of his service. This attack line is probably the flimsiest: Everyone concedes Walz achieved the rank of command sergeant major in the Guard, the highest rank attainable by an enlisted service member. But he didn’t complete some coursework required to retire at that rank. So are a few references on campaign websites to Walz as a “retired command sergeant major” some sort of “lie?” I don’t think so; he was retired, and he did achieve that rank. All in all, the attacks on Walz’s military record come across as pretty weak tea. Even the most serious — the claim that he dodged serving in Iraq — requires an asterisk: J.D. Vance’s running mate, Donald Trump, has endlessly described that war as a disastrous mistake. By the time he retired from the Guard, Walz shared that view. Should he have stuck around to see if he could be deployed there?” • Ah well. As FDR said: “Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.” Words both campaigns are living by, apparently. One more timeline thread:

Additional update: it looks like the unit didn’t go to Iraq until *2007* so he would have had to pull his retirement packet (which requires approval) and then commit to another 3+ years while potentially being a serving member of Congress. This is laughable

— Jim Leyland’s Dugout Lung Dart (@jimsheater) August 7, 2024

Kamala (D): “Fact check: Walz’s National Guard records show that Vance’s claim of ‘stolen valor’ is false” [Star Tribune]. “‘He was a great soldier,’ Eustice said. ‘When he chose to leave, he had every right to leave.’ Eustice said claims to the contrary are ill-informed and possibly sour grapes by a soldier [Thomas Behrends] who was passed over for the promotion to command sergeant major that went to Walz.” • Well, let’s hope Behrends doesn’t start a Foundation….

Kamala (D): “Steve Kornacki: Tim Walz’s election results don’t show a clear blue-collar boost” [NBC]. “Forty-nine of Minnesota’s 87 counties might be considered “Trump surge” counties; that is, Republicans ran at least 20 points better there under Trump in 2016 and 2020 than they had in the 2012 election, when Mitt Romney was the GOP nominee. Those counties are all part of Greater Minnesota, many are rural, and virtually all are overwhelmingly white. The share of white adults without four-year degrees in those counties 72% to 85%. Demographically, those counties almost perfectly fit the mold of the swaths of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania where Democrats have lost the most ground in the Trump era. They were also, before Trump, politically competitive, and some even voted for Barack Obama in 2012. In other words, these are the first counties you’d look at to assess whether Walz has unique appeal where his party has experienced its most dramatic Trump-era slide. But here is how Walz’s performance in them compares to Biden’s in 2020 and Obama’s in 2012. There’s no obvious difference between Walz’s strength in those areas and what Biden showed in 2020. Then there’s the flip side. There are eight Minnesota counties that you might call “blue surge” counties — the only places in the state where Democrats performed better in 2020 under Biden than they had in 2012 under Obama. They include the heart of the Twin Cities (Hennepin and Ramsey counties, home of Minneapolis and St. Paul) and their densely populated, college degree-rich suburbs. Again, the difference between Walz and Biden is negligible. Their numbers speak to the deepening concentration of Democratic loyalty found in suburbs all across the country since the emergence of Trump. What’s striking, if anything, is how different the Walz and Biden numbers are from Obama’s. When Obama won his two elections, he joined strong metro-area support with respectable showings (and sometimes better) among small-town and blue-collar voters. A primary feature of American politics since Obama has been the virtual disappearance of that kind of demographic and geographic balance from the Democratic coalition. In his ’22 campaign, Walz didn’t restore that old balance.” • Presumably, the Harris campaign isn’t ignorant of this. Therefore, their candidate did not pick Walz as a favorite son (a disputed theory in any case), but for other reasons (memage? Dad vibes? Relations with the House?). Or, possibly, the Harris campaign does not accept the Swing State paradigm.

* * *

Trump (): “A Trump Fundraiser in the Hamptons Unleashed a Gridlock Nightmare” [Vanity Fair]. “Root canal. Food poisoning from a bad oyster. For the Hamptons beach set, there are only a few things worse than driving east on a Friday afternoon in August. Once you get to Southampton, it’s essentially one lane in and one lane out on Route 27. What is normally a two-plus-hour drive from Manhattan—depending on which Hampton you frequent—can quickly become a three-plus-hour adventure on a Friday. Now add in a Friday evening political fundraiser for Donald Trump, whose recent assassination attempt prompted calls for increased security, and you’ve got enough gridlock to drive Hamptonites mad. On Friday, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick hosted the Bridgehampton event, which contributed to never-ending traffic from Riverhead to Amagansett that lasted late into the night, with reports of five-plus-hour journeys in from JFK and the city and even the backroads and residential streets being full of cars. ‘I just never saw anything like it,’ said Alison P., who works at a Bridgehampton salon and asked that her last name not be used…. Others were excited about the ex-president’s visit. Trump fans lined the streets near the airport and surrounding area to cheer for the Republican presidential nominee as he came and went.” • No helicopters used, then?

* * *

Kennedy (1): “Joe Rogan Supports Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President: ‘He’s the Only One That Makes Sense to Me'” [Variety]. “Mega-popular podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan said he supports Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president in this fall’s election. ‘He’s the only one that makes sense to me,’ Rogan said on Thursday’s episode of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ podcast. ‘He doesn’t attack people, he attacks actions and ideas, but he’s much more reasonable and intelligent. I mean, the guy was an environmental lawyer and he cleaned up the East River. He’s a legitimate guy.’ Rogan characterized Kennedy as a straight shooter, in contrast to the spin produced by Democrats and Republicans. ‘That’s politics. They do it on the left, they do it on the right,” Rogan said on the Aug. 8 podcast. “They gaslight you, they manipulate you, they promote narratives — and the only one who is not doing that is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'” • Commentary and video:

📰BIG NEWS!📰

Did you hear? @joerogan has endorsed @RobertKennedyJr for President!! This is huge!

The Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast in the WORLD, averaging about 11 million views per episode.

In this episode, he says about Kennedy:

“I am a fan. He’s the… pic.twitter.com/ToYDH2gV9c

— Moms for RFK Jr (@moms4rfkjr) August 9, 2024

I would have expected to see a formal endorsement on Rogan’s Twitter feed. Am I missing a more appropriate venue?

* * *

“The Democrats’ Half-Hearted Move to the Center” [Ruy Teixiera, The Liberal Patriot]. “Shapiro, of course, was not beloved of the progressive left and their campaign against him and for Walz apparently had an effect. But Shapiro also, in terms of background and personal affect, does not code as working class in a way Walz does. The Harris campaign hopes that his persona will help them reach the working class, particularly white working-class voters, whose support they so desperately need in key Midwestern/Rustbelt states. There are some problems with this. Walz, while he was a relatively conservative Democrat when he was representing a rural district in the House of Representatives, as governor of Minnesota he has been pretty much a down-the-line progressive. Indeed, in his current incarnation he is more a coastal liberal Democrat’s idea of what white working-class guys from the Midwest should be like rather than what they really are like. Nor does his electoral record suggest unusual blue collar appeal.

Campaign Finance

“Dear ActBlue” (PDF) [Commonwealth of Virginia]. A phishing equilibrium:

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

* * *

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

* * *

Celebrity Watch

Of course none of the Olympic delegations shared information, so while we may “live with Covid’ (or not) we are not and cannot “learn to live with Covid”:

Would also be interesting to learn how many knowingly competed (and exposed others) and if they took any specific actions to protect themselves or others when they knew they were positive. This could’ve been (and still can be) a great learning opportunity on “living with Covid.”

— Jerome Adams (@JeromeAdamsMD) August 8, 2024

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
★ This week[1] CDC August 5:	Last Week[2] CDC July 22 (until next week):
Variants [3] CDC August 3	Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC July 27
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data August 7:	National [6] CDC July 13:
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens August 5:	★Cleveland Clinic August 3:
rf
Travelers Data
★ Positivity[9] CDC July 22:	★ Variants[10] CDC July 22:
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC July 27:	Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC July 27:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular.

[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveling off. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) An optimist would see a peak.

[8] (Cleveland) Slowing.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) It’s rumored that there’s a new variant in China, XDV.1, but it’s not showing up here.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

* * *

Retail: “One beauty brand says it was owed $9,000, a shower-head manufacturer was holding a $15,000 bill and distributor CTE Watch says it was struggling to collect $41,000” [Logistics Watch, Wall Street Journal]. “The bills are among those that suppliers say Saks Fifth Avenue was holding for months as the retailer conserved cash ahead of its bid to buy out rival Neiman Marcus…. [R]eports of Saks stiffing suppliers surfaced last year and that small suppliers have been particularly hard hit because even small amounts of withheld funds can mean the difference between solvency and collapse. Most retailers tend to pay their suppliers within 60 days, but payments can stretch out in times of stress. Some vendors have sued to get their money. Jewelry brand Phillips House was owed more than $100,000 at one point last year. In November, it was paid in full after it filed a lawsuit in New York, alleging Saks broke its contract with the brand by failing to pay.” And: “‘Brands are not banks for retailers, which is how many of them have treated brands for years.’ — Jolie Skin CEO Ryan Babenzien.”

Manufacturing: Moe Tkacik whaling on Boeing again:

Boeing's program, producing the upper stage of a rocket designed to send heavy cargo to the moon, is 4 years late & a basket case bc, NASA says, the company doesn't have enough competent aerospace workers.
(I know what you're thinking: They killed them all?)
Well, that and.. pic.twitter.com/VDSxyfRUBU

— moe tkacik (@moetkacik) August 9, 2024

Yikes!

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 24 Exreme Fear (previous close: 24 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 27 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 9 at 1:17:45 PM ET.

The Conservatory

“Actually listening to 10cc” [Crooked Timber]. “Once you know my age my musical tastes as a teenager are very easy to guess…. But I love a lot of the music now in which I had no interest at all at the time. When I notice a band is playing nearby that I am curious about, and whose members I suspect might be on or near their last legs, I often go, usually taking at least one of my children with me. So last week it was the turn of my son to accompany me to see 10cc…. Seeing them, on their first US tour in 47 years, I discovered they are nothing like I thought. As presumably all of their fans and everyone else who was actually paying attention in the 70’s know, they’re basically an extremely sophisticated comic song band… Even their biggest hit [1], the one song that even I know by heart, sounded so different live. I’ve always assumed its at best a sad song about self-deception with a little cruelty thrown in, but live, in context, I got the feeling that not only does the subject know perfectly well that he’s in love but that she knows it too, and he knows that she knows it, both of them are happy about it, and the song is actually an exercise in elaborate Gricean implicature.”

• OK, OK. Gricean Implicature. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “”Implicature” denotes either (i) the act of meaning or implying one thing by saying something else, or (ii) the object of that act. Implicatures can be determined by sentence meaning or by conversational context, and can be conventional (in different senses) or unconventional. Figures of speech such as metaphor and irony provide familiar examples, as do loose use and damning with faint praise. Implicature serves a variety of goals: communication, maintaining good social relations, misleading without lying, style, and verbal efficiency. Knowledge of common forms of implicature is acquired along with one’s native language. Conversational implicatures have become one of the principal subjects of pragmatics.” And no wonder! More: “H. P. Grice developed an influential theory to explain and predict conversational implicatures, and describe how they arise and are understood…. Grice (1975: 26–30) postulated a general Cooperative Principle and four maxims specifying how to be cooperative. It is common knowledge, he asserted, that people generally follow these rules for efficient communication…. Grice viewed these not as arbitrary conventions, but as instances of general rules governing rational, cooperative behavior. For example, if Jane is helping Kelly build a house, she will hand Kelly a hammer rather than a tennis racket (relevance), more than one nail when several are needed (quantity), and straight nails rather than bent ones (quality); she will do all this quickly and efficiently (manner).” • See, e.g., Luke 11:10-12. Now consider oppo (or, as Democrats like to put it, “Join the conversation!”).

Zeitgeist Watch

“How to read a riot” [Financial Times]. “[S]ince the French gilets jaunes movement began attacking police and luxury stores in 2018, we have been in an era of leaderless crowds. Just as the internet cut out high-street travel agents, it is cutting politicians out of riots. Donald Trump did incite supporters to attack the Capitol in Washington on January 6 2021, ‘but he wasn’t the driving force behind the riots,’ says Julia Ebner, counter-extremism researcher at Oxford university. Nowadays, social media influencers do the driving. Ebner says these riots have united the usually ‘splintered’ online far right, from misogynist Andrew Tate through Islamophobe Tommy Robinson to the nationalist Patriotic Alternative. It’s as if the far-right internet has materialised on English high streets. Proud rioters posting videos of their exploits spread the contagion…. Another constant: riots peak in summer, when it’s nice to be outside at night…. And riots both require and build group identity. People tend to riot with people they feel connected to. … When people argue about the aims of riots, there are typically two rival theories, which are doing battle again this time. One theory is that rioters are mindless “riffraff” who must be punished. The other is that they are rational actors with grievances that must be addressed. The ‘riffraff’ and ‘rational actor’ theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot. In 2011, when many British rioters were poor non-white people, conservatives called them riffraff while the left defended them. Now that white rioters are attacking Muslims, the roles of prosecutor and defender are reversed.” • What I noticed on the videos was a particular set to the body, leading forward as if eagerly, and a faster walk. No smiling. Numerous people headed in the same direction, all separate individuals, but all leaning forward at the same angle, walking at the same pace.

News of the Wired

“The Indigenous Communities Preserving the Ancient Art of Roasting Agave” [Atlas Obscura]. “The roasting pit didn’t look like much yet: a pile of dirt, hiding the roasting agave beneath. Roy explained the roasting process to me. Traditionally, Cahuilla men set out in the spring to agave-harvesting grounds, and would dig and reuse a pit at the site of collection. The roasting was done at the collection site since the agave stands were often more than five miles away from a village. They’d roast 50 to 100 agave hearts at once. The pit was lined with rocks, tightly fitted together, and then a large fire—Roy’s team used oak—was built on top. According to the Malki publication Stalking the Wild Agave: A Southern California Food and Fiber Tradition by Deborah Dozier, the fire burned until ‘the hearthstones glowed red and a thick bed of hardwood coals had been created.’ The men would cover the coals with another layer of rock, followed by a layer of fresh agave leaves. Then agave hearts went in and were covered with more agave leaves. Historically, the pit was covered with fronds from native fan palms and then sand. Today, it’s covered with corrugated metal panels and old carpet under a top layer of a foot of dirt. ;The roasting tamed the agave so that it could be taken home, soft and submissive, calorically concentrated, wrapped in leaves and packed in agave-fiber nets, with the thorny tips, excess water, unusable fibers, and bitter leaves left behind,’ Dozier concludes.” • The Malki Museum on the Morongo Reservation (near Banning, CA) sounds like it would be worth a visit.

Revised London Tube map:

This is the correction thread.

Thanks for all who sent corrections, apologies if I missed anything, it's a bit crazy down there. This is Version 2b of the map, with everything I am aware of fixed. If you find anything else, please comment here. Revisions will be posted here. pic.twitter.com/yoluJpAGMN

— Tube Map Central (@TubeMapCentral) August 8, 2024

Who knew London was radial?

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Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From TH:

TH writes: “The Sherman Library and Gardens did not label this little bush with the interesting leaves and the profusion of bright pink flowers, but I think they’d line my driveway nicely.” Or a nice garden path. Readers?

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Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. If you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:

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If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!